It can’t be April already? This year is sweeping by. We had a glorious weekend of really springy weather just now and I spent most of it standing staring when I should have been slaving in the garden. So it’s been a busy busy month. Lots of cheery workshops both here and at Petersham Nurseries. April brings a couple of trips to Special Plants where I’ll be teaching Derry’s students to grow a cut flower patch. And I’m talking and demonstrating cut flower patch growing and posy tying AND giving a taster of my new Grow Your Kitchen Table Business workshop at the Country Living Fair at the end of April, so if you’re in London on 27th or 28th April do come along and say hello there. Our new website is beginning to work better for us, so I will be blogging again (until now slightly held back from that activity by a very busy Mothering Sunday - for which I thank you all!) Lots to talk about since I have TRIPS ahoy, I need to rearrange my house, and, while I think my social media management’s ok, I know I could do MUCH better - so in May we have Mark McCrum teaching a day on travel writing and photography, Amanda Russell on styling your house for photography, and Lucy Heath talking about how she’s created such an incredibly successful lifestyle blog. All three are days in which you should bring your camera. Personally I can’t wait and look forward to joining some of you as a paid up student on all three courses. Other new day courses here include one by Fabrizio on how to create and maintain a perennial wildflower meadow - not, as anyone who has tried this before will agree, necessarily as easy as you might think. Fabrizio’s been making the meadow here for thirteen years and yesterday I spied him excitedly counting the orchids as they begin to pop up. I saw my first white wild snakeshead fritillary flowering yesterday too. By mid June, when the wildflower meadow days are scheduled, we should have a mass of wild flowers. And we have a day with garden tours in the calendar too. People ask often if we’re open to the public so that they can come and wander round. The truth is that this garden doesn’t make sense without some explanation. There are very few flowers to look at, for example (because I cut them all!) Ours is not at all a show garden, but, it is interesting if you have it explained as you go. So we have a tour day with two tours, coffee, cake and me included: I’ll take you round and explain who we work things as we go. Places are already selling and hopefully it’ll be very interesting. Date for the Diary! Don’t forget our plant sale! In aid of the hole in our ancient village church’s roof (see blog post on the subject for more info,) we are holding a bring and buy plant sale in Charlton Musgrove Village Hall on 6th May 9.30-12.30. The idea is that we all bring our spare seedlings and we sell them in aid of mending the hole in the church roof. I have trays of little babies coming along for this and am very grateful to our volunteer Penny who is patiently pricking out little sowings for us. Please do come along and bring spare plants and buy ours. Every little really will help. Thank you and happy gardening!